


Fallen

by lily_zen



Category: X JAPAN
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angst, Deathfic, Drama, Fantasy, Friendship, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-21
Updated: 2012-03-21
Packaged: 2017-11-02 07:42:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/366590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lily_zen/pseuds/lily_zen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The angel Yoshiki has fallen for his mortal charge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fallen

Fallen

Rating: PG-13

Pairing: Yoshiki + hide

Genre: AU, Supernatural, One-shot

Archive: Ask

By: Lily Zen

 

Notes: Written quite a long time ago. I still think it's a good piece though.

Disclaimer: Not mine.

 

 

_An aching cold spreading through his limbs, making him slow, lethargic. He felt too weak to even move, sitting there on the cold cement in the dead of night. The crowd swelled and parted, moving like the Red Sea as Moses raised his arms and divided it to make a pathway for the Hebrews. Then the gap falling closed again, the people, the water rushing in to crush the Pharaoh’s chariots._

_His eyelids grew heavier and it got harder to watch the Red Sea, but he knew it was there. However, his mind saw it as a distant, unimportant thing as people passed, not giving the man on the ground a second of notice. He felt the air shift again as the Red Sea parted and closed. There was a shuffle of feet, the scrape of shoes on cement, and then stopping; the sensation of being watched carefully._

_He felt his head tip back, his breathing grow more labored than before. The frigid cold of the snow felt deeply imbedded into his body. A cresting wave broke over his soul, and he realized it was the tide of life pulling him under to deeper, darker waters. Overwhelmingly hot hands, the equivalent of the Sahara desert, cupped his face. There was a smooth, soothing voice, almost the embodiment of lush jungle paradise, murmuring to him incomprehensible things._

Then his head lolled to the side bonelessly, and the sensation of hands disappeared just as the rest of the world did. The sea opened her arms, and cradled him in her cool, tender embrace.

Hide sat peacefully on a bench, watching passengers step slowly onto the train. Some went with loved ones who had waited to meet them here. Some went tearful and alone. Some were simply indifferent to it all, as empty as they’d been in life. Only hide remained seated as the conductor took tickets and directed people inside.

 

“Hey! You comin’?” the conductor cried once his line had disappeared within the doors of the train. “No,” hide answered quietly, shaking his head. He felt calm, subdued; a far cry from his normal boisterous self. Still he sat there on the bench, unwilling to part from the last vestiges of his life. Denial, maybe? Nostalgia? Who knew why?

 

“Suit yerself,” the man said, his southern accent remaining with him even then. Throughout life and death, the conductor remained true to his roots. But would hide? Or would he forget? The conductor vanished inside the train. Doors closed, the engine spoke, and the train shot off through the dark tunnel into the unknown void.

 

As the last car was pulled past, the bench creaked and someone sat next to the pink-haired man. Startled, he jumped and whipped his head around to look at the stranger invading his territory. A petite Japanese man with golden skin greeted his sight and the visualization of sunlight entered his mind. Equally blond hair fell in short strands, shading his chocolate colored eyes. However, the man’s exotic appearance was contrasted greatly by his manner of dress. A pinstriped dress shirt with the cuffs partially rolled up, black dress pants, and shiny black dress shoes that looked brand new.

 

The stranger noticed him stranger and smiled sweetly at hide, his eyes crinkling a little bit to form small crow’s feet at the corners. Still, that little imperfection only made him all the more beautiful. “You don’t wish to leave your life behind yet?” A voice like lush jungle paradise resounded through the empty station. _There was a smooth, soothing voice, almost the embodiment of lush jungle paradise…_

 

“No, I suppose not,” hide answered carefully, turned his head away resolutely in order to gaze at the floor. Why was he still sitting here? He knew that he was dead and gone. Back on earth, people were probably beginning to haul away his carcass to the morgue. Hide’s hair slid into his face, hiding the revelations from his spectator.

 

“I can understand,” the golden man said in a low voice, “I myself have only just discovered what it is to live. Then it is taken from me.” The other man seemed just as forlorn and saddened over his own death. Maybe disappointed was a more accurate description? “Yeah,” hide agreed, “It’s only when we’ve lost something that we realize just how precious it is.”

 

“Hm, so true,” the man agreed, and hide could see him nod his head thoughtfully through his peripheral vision. “So what’s your name?” hide asked as he straightened up abruptly. The golden-skinned man smiled at him that same gentle smile as before. “Yoshiki. My name is Yoshiki.”

 

“Nice name. I’m hide,” the pink-haired man replied.

 

“It’s nice to meet you, hide,” Yoshiki said, his voice turning the pink-haired man’s name into something like the caress of silk on bare skin. He shivered at the sound of it, but offered a smile in return. “Yeah, you too.”

 

There was a quiet pause, and an almost thoughtful air around Yoshiki. Unable to stand the silence for long, hide began to talk again. “So why are you here? I mean…how’d you die?” A sudden thought occurred to the pink-haired man, “Oh, but you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. I just was curious. Maybe morbidly so.”

 

“There’s nothing wrong with curiosity,” Yoshiki replied as he smiled again in amusement. Standing up, he took a few steps in front of hide. “Look,” he directed, his back still facing hide. Raising his eyes from the ground, where they’d immediately fallen in his embarrassment, he looked at the other’s back…and gasped at what he found.

 

From the man’s pristine pinstriped shirt rose translucent wisps of light…in the shape of wings. Stemming out from his shoulder blades, they moved when he moved, shifted when he shifted. Right now, they shifted restlessly, displaying emotions of unease even when Yoshiki’s body did not.

 

They were so beautiful. Transparent, yet there, like a rainbow almost. Eyes wide, hide whispered the words, “What are you?” Yoshiki turned back to him and smiled, just barely, and returned to his seat. Frowning thoughtfully, he faced hide. “I guess I was what you people would call…an angel?”

 

Hide shook his head in disbelief. “There’s no such thing as angels.” Yoshiki merely looked at him with a raised eyebrow. “You really believe that?” Shaking his head the blond said with a sigh, “Oh well, believe what you want.” Hide looked at Yoshiki, and noticed he could no longer see the light-formed wings. He leaned back and looked again. They were there! However, when he moved forward again, they disappeared. Back, forward, back, forward; hide repeated the process several times. That is, until he noticed Yoshiki grinning at him.

 

“What?” hide asked, a scowl forming on his face. “You are so adorable,” Yoshiki answered quiet plainly, with a shrug. The scowl intensified. “Men are not adorable,” hide pointed out, indignance coloring his voice. The angel’s smile faded slightly. “They can be,” he answered finally.

 

Feeling like a slight cad for scolding a higher being, hide quickly changed the subject. “So anyway, you were explaining how you got here?” This time it was Yoshiki who looked at the ground. “I was trying to help someone, a mortal, and…I failed,” a thoughtful pause, “But there’s more to it than that.”

 

Now hide was intrigued. The vague answer was just the bare bones of the story, he was sure. It must have been something fantastically wonderful and dramatic to cause the angel death. Perhaps Yoshiki was on a holy quest of sorts? “Will you tell me about it?” hide asked, sounding like a child eager for a bedtime story. The blond shrugged, answering in a subdued tone, “Sure.”

 

Yoshiki straightened in his seat, and placed both hands palm up on his knees. His eyes closed and he seemed to be collecting his thoughts. When his voice came, smooth and somber, a storyteller’s voice, it startled the pink haired man so badly he jumped. “We angels lead an organized life. Everything is planned from the day you are created to the day you die. A hatchling will start at the very bottom of the hierarchy and work his way up, stopping only when they’ve reached their destination. I had just about reached mine, but in order to do so I needed to save a doomed mortal. Then my journey would be complete and I would live out eternity in my station.

 

“When I received my assignment, one would not say that I was overjoyed, but as time passed I came to accept it more and more. My mortal which I had been gifted with was interesting: loud and abrasive; soft and tender. Two opposite ends of a coin. His antics provided me with much amusement. I used my abilities to ripple the waters of reality and steer luck his way, but for some reason my hard-worked magic kept failing. My mortal was slowly fulfilling his doomed fate.

 

“Then once when I awoke, I looked within the waters of my reflective pool and could see him. See him fading, dying in the way that mortals are wont to do. Quickly I flew to my superior, for we all have a superior within our hierarchy, and begged permission to save him. My superior calmly informed me that the only way for me to save him was to clip my wings and fall to earth, and if I did so, I could never return home. To my own shock, I agreed. This mortal’s life had been put into my hands, and I was not going to let his blinding beauty fade from existence if I could stop it. So…my superior clipped my wings, and I crashed to earth heavily.

 

“It hurt. Both ordeals really. Our wings are part of what define angels, and to lose them…that hurt a great deal. If I may confess, I’d always been quite vain about my wings. Falling to the mortal realm though, that was a shock. The heat, and then the overwhelming cold. It was no wonder my mortal was freezing to death. I managed to part the crowd and go to my mortal’s side, only to discover that I was far, far too late. Even as I held his face in my hands for the first time, his life was draining from his body, leaving a cold, empty shell. My life, being tied to his (one of the clauses for my leaving), also faded, and that, that is how I came to be here.”

 

All was silent as Yoshiki finished his tale, and hide chewed his lip thoughtfully as tears came unbidden to his eyes. Of course he’d gradually come to the realization that Yoshiki was talking about him. The description of the mortal’s death was too eerily close to be anything but. God, he felt so guilty. In his own misery, his own complete lack of will to live had caused another living being to also die.

 

A golden skinned hand slowly clasped his own, and hide hesitantly returned the gesture, basking in the warmth those hands provided to his chilled soul. _Overwhelmingly hot hands, the equivalent of the Sahara desert, cupped his face._ “Don’t feel bad. I made my own choices. That’s all we can do is be responsible for ourselves.”

 

Hide’s shoulders shook with suppressed sadness. “But I do feel bad. You’re here because of me.” All Yoshiki did was shrug. “It doesn’t matter,” he said finally, “What’s done is done.”  The sound of a train could be distantly heard. Hide glanced up at the schedule posted on the wall and realized they must have been talking longer than he’d thought. Yoshiki rose gracefully, and turned to face hide, still holding onto the other man’s hand.

 

“With that in mind, you know you can’t go back,” the blond said, “So are you coming?” Yoshiki looked at the pink haired man inquisitively, who only gazed back with a remote expression on his face. Suddenly he looked at the joined hands, and spoke dispassionately, “So you’ve fallen for me?”

 

Yoshiki let a small smile slide across his countenance as he gazed down at the mortal he’d been put in charge of. “Yes, I suppose that I have.” With that the pink haired man rose, and crossed to the other man, standing directly in front of him. “I think I may have fallen for you too.” As silly and naïve as that sounded, it just may have been true. Only time would tell, and they now had all of eternity to figure it out.

 

Hide leaned forward then, licking his dry lips and pressed them gently on top of the angel’s mouth. His angel. In the background, the train squealed as it pulled up to the station. The conductor, a different one this time, called out in a booming voice that occupied the space of the small station, “All aboard!”

 

The pink haired man tugged the stunned angel by the hand and led him to the train. Together they stepped through into the sparse interior, hands still intertwined. Both with lost lives. Both with eternity ahead of them. Both fallen.

 

\- -FIN- -

 


End file.
